Ä¢¹½¶ÌÊÓÆµ

Self-Service Data Quality forÌýDataOps

At the recent A-Team Data Management Summit Virtual, Ä¢¹½¶ÌÊÓÆµ CEO Stuart Harvey delivered a keynote on “Self-Service Data Quality for DataOps – Why it’s the next big thing in financial services.â€� The keynote () can be read below, with slides from the keynote included for reference. Should you wish to discuss the subject with us, please don’t hesitate to contact Stuart,Ìýor Kieran Seaward, Head of Sales.ÌýÌý

I started work in banking in the 90’sÌý²¹²õÌýa programmer,Ìýdeveloping real-time software systems written in C++.ÌýIn these good old days,ÌýI’d be given a specification, I’d write some code, test and document it. After a few weeks it would be deployed on the trading floor. If my software broke or the requirements changed it would come back to me and I’d start thisÌýprocessÌýall over again. ThisÌý‘w²¹³Ù±ð°ù´Ú²¹±ô±ô’Ìýapproach was slow and, if I’m honest, apart from the professional pride of not wanting to create buggy code,ÌýI didn’t feel a lot of ownership for what I’d created.Ìý

In the last five years a new methodology in software engineering has changed all that – it’s calledÌýDevOps,Ìý²¹²Ô»åÌýbrings a very strategic andÌýagileÌýapproach to building new software.

More recently DevOps had a baby sister calledÌýDataOps,Ìýand it’s this subject that I’d like to talk about today.

Many Chief Data Officers (CDO) and analysts have been impressed by the increased productivity and agility their C³ó¾±±ð´ÚÌýT±ð³¦³ó²Ô´Ç±ô´Ç²µ²âÌýOfficer (CTO)Ìýcolleagues are seeing through the use of DevOps. Now they’d like to get in on the act. In the last few months at Ä¢¹½¶ÌÊÓÆµ we’ve been talking a lot to CDO clients about their desire to have a moreÌýagileÌýapproach toÌýdata governanceÌýand how DataOps fits into this picture.ÌýÌý

In these conversations we’ve talked a great deal about theÌýownershipÌýof data. A key question is how to associate the measurement and fixing of a pieceÌýofÌýbrokenÌýdata with the person most closely responsible for it. In our experience the owner of a piece of data usually makes the bestÌýdata steward. These are the people who can positively affect business outcomes through accurate measuring and monitoring of data and is typically a CDO’s role.Ìý

We have seen a strong desire to push data science processes, including data governance and the measurement of actual data qualityÌý(at aÌýrecordÌýlevel) into the processes and automation that exist in a bank.Ìý

I’d like to share with you through some simple examples of what we are doing with our investment bank and wealth management clients. I hope that this shows that aÌýself-serviceÌýapproach to data quality (with appropriate tooling) can empower highly agile data quality measurement for any company wishing to implement the standard DataOps processes of validation, sorting, aggregation, reporting and reconciliation.Ìý

Roles in DataOps and Data QualityÌý

We work closely with the people who use the Ä¢¹½¶ÌÊÓÆµ platform, the people that are responsible for the governance of data and reporting on its quality. They have titles like Chief Data Officer, Data Quality Manager, Chief Digital Officer and Head of Regulation. These data consumers are responsible for large volumes of often messy data relating to entities, counterparties, financial reference data and transactions. This data does not reside in just one place; it transitions through multiple bank processes. It is sometimes “at restâ€� in a data store and sometimes “in motionâ€� as it passes via Extract,ÌýTransform,ÌýLoad (ETL)Ìýprocesses to other systems that live upstream of the point at which it was sourced.ÌýÌý

For example, a bank might download counterparty information from Companies House to populate its Legal Entity Master. This data is then published out to multiple consuming applications for KnowÌýYourÌýCustomer (KYC), Anti-MoneyÌýLaundering (AML)Ìýand Life Cycle Management. In these systems the counterparty records are augmented with information such as aÌýLegalÌýEntityÌýIdentifier (LEI), a BankÌýIdentifierÌýCode (BIC)Ìýor a ticker symbol.ÌýÌý

This ability to empower subject matter experts and business users who are not programmers to measure data at rest and in motion has led to the following trends:Ìý

  • Ownership:ÌýData quality management moves from being the sole responsibility of a potentially remote data steward toÌýall of those who are producing and changing data, encouraging a data driven culture.Ìý
  • Federation:ÌýData quality becomesÌýeveryone’s job.ÌýLet’s think about end of day pricing at a bank. The team that owns the securities master will want to test accuracy and completeness of data arriving from a vendor.ÌýThe analyst working upstream who takes an end of day price from the securities master to calculate aÌývolume-weighted average priceÌý(VWAP)Ìýwill have different checks relating to the timeliness of information. Finally,Ìýthe data scientist upstream of this who uses the VWAP to create predictive analytics. They want to build their own rules to validate data quality.Ìý
  • Governance:ÌýA final trend that we are seeing is the tighter integration with standard governance tools. To be effective, self-service data qualityÌýand DataOps require tight integration with the existing systems that hold data dictionaries,Ìýmetadata, and lineage information.

Here’s an illustration of how of how we see Ä¢¹½¶ÌÊÓÆµ Self Service Data QualityÌý(SSDQ) PlatformÌýintegrating with DataOps in a high–impact way that you might want to consider in your own data strategy.Ìý

1. Data Governance TeamÌý

FirstÌýoff,Ìýwe offer a set of pre-built dashboards for PowerBI, Tableau and Qlik that allow your data stewards to have rapid access to data quality measurements which relateÌýjust to them. A user in the London office might be enabled to see data for Europe or, perhaps, just dataÌýinÌýtheir department. Within just a few clicks a data steward for the Legal Entity Master system could identify all records that are in breach of anÌýaccuracy checkÌýwhere an LEI is incorrect,Ìýor aÌýtimeliness checkÌýwhere the LEI has not been revalidated in theÌýGlobal LEI Foundation’sÌý(GLEIF) database inside 12 months.Ìý


2. Data Quality Clinic: Data RemediationÌý

Data Quality Clinic extends the management dashboard by allowing a bank toÌýreturn broken data to its owner for fixing. It effectively quarantines broken records and passes them to the data engineer in a queue, improving data pipelines and overall data governance & data quality. Clinic runs is a web browser and is tightly integrated with information relating to data dictionaries, lineage and third–party sources for validation. Extending our LEI example just now,ÌýI might be the owner of a bunch of entities which have failed an LEI check. Clinic would show me the records in question and highlight the fields in error. It would connect to GLEIF as the source of truth for LEIs and provide me with hints on what to correct. As you’d expect,Ìýthis process can be enhanced by Machine Learning to automate thisÌýentity resolutionÌýprocess under human supervision. Ìý


3. FlowDesignerÌýStudio: Rule creation, documentation, sharingÌý

FlowDesigner is the rules studio in which the data governance team of super users build, manage, document and source-control rules for the profiling, cleansing and matching of enterprise data. We like to share these rules across our clients so FlowDesigner comes pre-loaded with rules for everything from nameÌý²¹²Ô»åÌýaddress checking to CUSIPÌýorÌýISIN validation.Ìý


4. Data Quality Manager: Connecting to data sources;Ìýscheduling, automating solutionsÌý

This part of the Ä¢¹½¶ÌÊÓÆµ platform allows your technology team to connect to data flowing from multiple sources, schedule how rules are applied to data at rest and in–motion. It allows for the sharing and re-use of rules across all parts of your business. We have many clients solving big data problems involvingÌýhundreds ofÌýmillions of records using Data Quality ManagerÌýacross multiple different environments and data sources, on-premise or in public (or more typically private) cloud.Ìý


Summary: Self-Service Data Quality for DataOpsÌý

Thanks for joining me today as I’ve outlined how self-service data quality is a key part of successful DataOps. CDOs need real-time data quality insights to keep up with business needs while technical architects require a platform that doesn’t need a huge programming team to support it. If you haveÌýanyÌýquestions aboutÌýthis topic, or how we’veÌýapproachedÌýit,Ìýthen we’d be glad to talk with you.ÌýPlease get in touch below.Ìý

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